


Sense of Proportion

by theoldgods



Series: Part of Our Game [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Background Relationships, Clothed Sex, Drawing, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Kneeling, Masturbation, Office Sex, Older Woman/Younger Man, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Season/Series 04, Smoking, Spanking, Sub Mycroft, Texting, Vaginal Fingering, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-05 23:34:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10320086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoldgods/pseuds/theoldgods
Summary: Talk therapy is going surprisingly well for Mycroft so far, but all things have their limits, and some forms of self-awareness require a little extra discipline to instill.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Implicit spoilers for season 4. This should mostly stand on its own, but it is part of an overarching series of casual Smallcroft sexual encounters and references those past experiences.
> 
> Shoutout to Nicola and Lou for the informal brainstorming and Britpicking. As always, any remaining Americanisms are mine, and I welcome corrections on that point.
> 
> I reblog and have occasional tag meltdowns about Mycroft, among all sorts of other stuff, at [my tumblr](http://theoldgods.tumblr.com) if that's your thing!

She found Mycroft leaning over a balustrade, at the end of a plume of smoke that drifted back into the parlor through the open French doors. He was assiduously watching the glimpse of night sky visible through the London haze, though his shoulders tightened as she approached.

“Black Russians?”

He exhaled a cloud into the light pollution around them.

“Someone recommended them to me, once.”

“I'm honored.” His hand was cool under her touch as she slid the cigarette from his unresisting fingers. “I do rather think the ambassador might like to keep his parlor smoke-free, as it were.”

Mycroft said nothing as she inhaled. The taste—smooth, subtle—was just as she remembered, and for a moment it was Woody next to her, chattering unselfconsciously about nothing over an ashtray while she reviewed paperwork. He disappeared when she exhaled, to be replaced by Mycroft’s imperious face.

“Delicious.”

Mycroft inclined his head and held out his hand. She slid the cigarette back between his fingers, watching a flick of ash fall onto his dinner jacket. Mycroft stared at the speck until she brushed it away, his arm muscles flexing beneath her touch.

“Much obliged,” he told the sodium light on the street below. They passed the cigarette back and forth between them several times in silence until he shifted and, pursing his lips for a tight smoke spiral, asked, “Did you want anything in particular, my lady?”

“Peace and quiet.” Her head was still ringing from the ambassador’s overloud voice, competing for attention over the sounds of the string quartet he’d hired for the night, along with the glasses of Talisker that had been shoved in her direction. “I think they might be on to some horrendous form of drunken diplomatic charades soon enough.”

Mycroft glanced back over his shoulder and shuddered.

“Bad enough the wife keeps plying me with fruity cocktails.” He passed the cigarette back to her with faintly trembling hands. “I think Smyth put her up to it, some imbecilic bet with Sir Edwin.”

“Who do you want to win?”

He gave this question more consideration than she expected as she drew rich bitterness deep into her throat and chest.

“Whoever wins, we as a government will be all the poorer for it.”

She raised an eyebrow as she exhaled, angling the smoke into his face until his nostrils flared. “It's not so dramatic as all that, clearly.”

“Either Smyth gets me a reputation as a fruity tart, which will be irritating to work around when we’re at the same table plying the Koreans with Laphroaig and soju later this month, or Edwin walks around deeply satisfied with himself and overconfident in my presence for a fortnight.” He plucked the remaining stub from her grasp. “Neither is ideal for Her Majesty, I can assure you.”

“Edwin would only preen for a few days at most,” she corrected him, smiling as he ashed close to her hand on the ledge. “He's had his fill of late. As I said, not so very dramatic, compared to any other number of trip-ups I could name.”

“She's fine, thank you for asking.” Mycroft took a second drag, exhaling sweet smoke over the top of her head. “I'm considering upgrading her security clearance. Circumlocution is such a weary thing after a certain point.”

“Maybe the poor girl likes not having every sordid detail of democracy dragged through her office. After a certain level the glamor of it all does rather fade.”

Mycroft sneered. “One Ultra-level impartial information clearinghouse is quite enough, I'm told. More than enough.” He offered the cigarette; she pushed his fingers back toward his own mouth. With a grunt he slid it between his lips, tonguing the end before speaking again. “From what I've read, the entire practice is rather useless without specific details, in any case, so as soothing as her voice may be, this will be a limited affair.”

“Clearly one person’s mental health is not worth upsetting the security of the nation over.” She drummed her fingertips against the balustrade, watching his eyes flicker in their direction. “If only your demons had the decency to play out in public. ‘Shamed peer takes own life’ has been easy enough to explain to her.”

Mycroft extinguished the remaining cigarette bit, crushing tobacco against stone with a remarkable amount of force.

“Does referencing him constantly... _help_ you, really?”

“Is a poor sweet old woman not allowed to remember her husband?”

His answering snort was clearly audible over the ambient reception noise.

“It isn't entirely intentional, I assure you. But old habits do die hard—” Mycroft crushed the cigarette further “—and a husband, no matter how dead, is a habit, after all.” She swallowed before continuing. “In any case, regardless of what I rationally know, I find the pang of remembrance— _suitable_ , considering. The least I can do for the old boy.”

“You needn’t torture yourself over a rogue newspaper baron’s behavior.”

“And you needn't remind me of that fact. Again.” She looked up into his face until he glanced away, and kept her eyes on his stony profile as he stroked the balustrade, fingers rubbing ash into limestone. “Some torture, correctly applied, is a necessary relief.”

Mycroft’s cheeks flushed. “Is that your theory as to why our sort of people have historically been so keen on the cane?”

“Decent young ladies of consequence had rulers, not canes.” She smiled as Mycroft sniffed. “Nothing so uncouth as being bent over sideways to be smacked on the arse. That sort of thing was meant for attempts at genuine seduction, not punishment.”

“I was only ever formally caned once. Curiously enough, I find being asked to tell my deepest secrets to a stranger almost less awkward.”

“Ah, Mycroft.” She slid a hand over his arm, close enough to hover above his jacket but not to touch. “Most people don't find it _curious_ that someone would prefer a bit of awkward conversation to physical abuse.”

“I said _almost_ , my lady.” In a halting murmur he continued, “Some things are unsuited to words, no matter how skilled the interlocutor.”

She slid her hand down to his, hovering above his wrist before trailing one finger through the ashy smudge that remained of the cigarette. Her lower stomach was flush with warmth quite separate from that of the Talisker. When she pulled away, he did not move, though his eyes flickered back and forth between her necklace and her face.

“Until later, Mycroft.” She turned away, letting one finger tangle in her pearls. “I hope someone offers you something harder than cocktails, if you want it.”

“Not tonight.” His voice was hoarse. “I don't fancy mixing scotch with martinis that have some horrid grenadine product in, even if Smyth and Edwin do make a fool of me for it.”

“It all sounds rather fun to me.”

She looked back at him, illuminated from behind by the noisy lightscape of London refracted across the terrace, and slid into the ambassador’s flat. When she accepted a tumbler from the nearest waiter, the touch of glass against her skin brought out the faintest goose pimples.

* * *

Mycroft did not mention physical abuse again until some ten days later, as she sat reading briefings with her feet on her desk while he knelt, naked from the waist down, remnants of come stuck to his thighs, his head in her lap. The day had been excruciatingly long, meeting after meeting until the last, in Herself’s presence, had ended at midnight and Mycroft, ghostly pale and distinctly twitchy, had followed her back to her office like an ill-tempered dog.

He was more feline by one in the morning, drifting in and out of a fugue state that she suspected was both sleep and deep concentration at once, if such a thing were possible, like a bizarrely efficient creature in an Attenborough special. In one of his moments of clarity, as she was reviewing a report from an operation in Moscow and allowing him to massage her ankle, he mumbled into her trousers, “Have you ever beaten anyone, my lady?”

She had eaten nothing more than salad and briefing-room biscuits all day and was currently attempting to keep her focus with a cup of Earl Grey, grimly decaffeinated as a nod to her dreams of falling asleep at some point before sunrise. For a moment his words rose from the dry and sordid tale of Russian arms dealers before her, some piece of surreal fantasy in and amongst fomenting political unrest in Eastern Europe.  

“Are you quite all right, Mr. Holmes?”

His hand tightened around her ankle, though she avoided actually looking down at him.

“Idle curiosity.”

She slid a hand into his hair.

“Is this your way of asking if I will cane you?”

“‘It all sounds rather fun to me.’” His imitation of her was surprisingly accurate, though wooden. “And I don’t mean now.”

“I bloody well hope not. I’d like to go to bed before dawn.” She slid fingers under his chin until he looked up, the edges of his face blurring into the words on the page. “This may shock you, Mycroft, but I don’t actually own a cane.”

“I’m scandalized.” He was rumpled and yet suffused with light, some faint afterglow of the attention she’d absentmindedly paid earlier to his cock while reading. “I can ask elsewhere.”

She set the memo down. “If you’re serious, I do know other ways. I am not at all averse to metaphorically or literally whipping your arse; I think it would look rather nice.”

Mycroft swallowed as he got to his feet. “I will think on it. I must prepare for the Koreans with what’s left of the night.”

The reply came buzzing to her phone two days later, as she was resetting her chignon after a lunchtime meeting with Anthea.

_Ruler? Bare hand?_

She slid the last pin in, brushing her scalp until it prickled with pain and a happy rush went down her spine.

_A difficult choice, but I’ll allow you to make up your own mind._

_Tomorrow?_

She would be up late as it was awaiting further Russian briefings, though certainly this was preferable to endless pots of coffee at her own club, where Magnussen’s face was liable to appear out of the gloom at odd moments.

_Nine, under E. R.?_

His reply came within seconds, causing her to stab herself in the neck with the post of her earring as, laughing, she slid it back into her ear and stood.

_You have appalling manners._

* * *

“How was the soju?”

Mycroft was in trousers and shirt, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, drinking a large glass of water as she entered his office and deposited her purse and coat on his sofa.

“It was not their top-flight vintage, but I’m not sure anyone else noticed, so they seem to have fulfilled their diplomatic duty.” Before she could open her mouth, he continued, his voice quick and low, “And Smyth did not make a single pointed glance or remark about mixed drinks.”

“Good news for Her Majesty indeed,” she said, nodding at the portrait behind him as he winced. “Bad news for your sense of proportion.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Why don’t you take a seat, Mr. Holmes? Elsewhere, if you please,” she added as he bent to sink into his own chair. With a shiver he obeyed, moving around the desk to perch on the edge of the opposite seat. She took her time in crossing to his chair and leaning back into it, one leg thrown across its arm. His eyes followed the motion of her limbs through the air, though he did not turn his head, before focusing on a point just above her shoulder.

“That's better, darling boy.”

He closed his eyes.

“Tell me, what did I say about fussing over drinks?”

His voice was hesitant as he parroted her words. “‘It's not so dramatic as all that, clearly.’”

“And was I wrong?”

He bit his bottom lip but held silent. She wriggled her arse deeper into the cushion, which still emanated his body heat.

" _And_ _was I wrong_?”

“The logic tree was perfectly—”

She slid the chair forward until she could reach out and tighten her fingers around his chin. Mycroft fell still, his eyes shuttling back and forth under his closed lids.

“You took a perfectly reasonable logic tree and applied it to a situation where it by no means belonged, as if it were a careful international negotiation at stake and not our stupid colleagues’ idea of a party trick. You do know how human social interaction works, don't you? Do I need to bring in your brother?”

His mouth had gone thin. “Not unless you want him to insult every member of Whitehall.”

“I am not unaware of the merits of such an idea. Several of them could use a good upbraiding.” She slid a finger back to the edge of his ear and stroked. “You are one such member.”

“I am here, my lady. I...obviously agree.”

“And when it comes to your overdramatic flights of fancy? Would you agree that such _logic trees_ are born of anxiety and not any sort of rational thought?”

He shifted in his seat; she tightened her grip around his jawline. Beneath her touch she felt his muscles and tendons release, opening his mouth and sinking his shoulders, as he replied.

“Yes, my lady.”

She bit back the grin that burbled on her lips as her lower abdomen twisted.

“You and your entire family seem prone to such overdramatic hullabaloo; I'm sure I've mentioned that before.”

He grunted.

“In any case, it's rather unbecoming in an estimable civil servant like yourself, and I'm certain that sort of anxious catastrophizing cannot be of much benefit to Her Majesty.”

One of his eyes cracked open. “And you’ll save Her Majesty the cost of my mental health treatment by fixing it?”

She withdrew her hands from his face, opening his top drawer. Within, perfectly aligned, were pens, a bite-marked pencil, and a ruler, which she tossed onto the desk between them.

“I do love how prepared you are for every eventuality.”

Mycroft swallowed. “The idea that a man should have a ruler for any other purpose being clearly too absurd for words.”

“You did not text me to compare the functions of office supplies, Mycroft. You asked me here to beat your arse, for reasons you find hard to articulate but which relate to the physically impossible standard of self-control you set yourself, spiraling out of control.”

Both his eyes were open and staring, though he scowled. “And, truly, what do you get out of this?”

She laughed at that, or nearly so, a swoop of lust flooding her cunt. She let him see her smile, and lick his lips nervously in response, as she placed both of her feet flat on the ground and sat up.

“You can begin on the floor, I think, Mr. Holmes.”

He blinked, a slow owlish motion, as she ran fingertips over the ruler.

“Unless you'd rather feel me working you cold, as it were, without a chance to warm up? I always found that rather...painful.”

He got to his feet, crossing midway to the sofa before pausing and looking back at her. At her nod, he slid his fingers into the waistband of his trousers. “You have experience on the other end?”

“Not with men.” In truth her experience submitting under the lash was singular, belonging, like half of Her Majesty’s Government, to one Irene Adler, whose exquisite nail polish was burned into her memory alongside the sensation of her whip. “I don't waste my time being beaten by amateurs, however skilled.”

Mycroft had his trousers and pants pulled partially down his thighs, exposing the not entirely flaccid line of his cock to the air. “Somehow I don't have any such compunctions.”

“Ask a man to touch his cock and he begins stating the obvious.” She tapped the edge of the ruler against the desktop as he shut his mouth. “I'm not here for your silence; that would be a waste of the valuable asset that is your voice. I _am_ here to watch.”

His chest rose and fell sharply under the panels of his untucked shirt.

“Shall I begin?”

“If you like.”

As he eyed his cock, she slid out of her brogues and opened his top drawer once again, drawing out the chewed pencil. She rolled it between her fingers, considering, while he contemplated himself; by the time he took his prick in hand, she had pulled his diary in front of her.

“Do you really use this? Seems pedestrian for a man of your capabilities.”

He tightened his grip, running his fingers along his length as he shivered. “Is that a rhetorical question?”

“Is it?”

He rolled his eyes. She kicked the underside of his desk, causing him to lurch forward.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Mycroft. I won’t do any permanent damage.”

The day’s lines were blank. She sketched in a long cylinder between 12:00 and 16:00.

“What are you—”

“Surely I said not to worry.” In the silence that followed, the light brushing of the pencil echoed. Mycroft was frozen, cock standing more firmly against his stomach. “Do you not want to, then?”

“I don’t—” He slid a hand to the head of his prick and bit back a grunt. “What do you want me to do?”

She looked up, eyeing the head under the curve of his index finger, before adding it atop her rough tube outline. “How would you normally take care of yourself?”

He exhaled shakily. “Not standing up.”

She snorted. “As you like.”

He hesitated for a long moment before peeling his trousers and pants the rest of the way off and sinking to his knees. As he wrapped a hand around his cock, he said, “I am no exhibitionist.”

“A drama queen like you?” She stifled another laugh at the rigidness in his shoulders. “Perish the thought.”

“Flights of—anxious fancy—” he’d begun stroking with more decided purpose “—are not dramatic.”

She looked up from the veins she was sketching in along the cock’s underside to consider his pale hands against his rosy prick, twisting elegantly back and forth, pausing at tip or root with a near-flourish before moving again.

“You do wank with some style.”

He thrust forward, cockhead gliding between two splayed fingers.

“Does it take you very long, when you’re alone?”

The sounds of skin on skin were growing louder. “If I—want it to.”

“Self-control.” She hummed, adding the outline of testicles to the end of her penis sketch. “Do you fantasize about politely shagging with the lights off, then?”

“Never.” His eyes were closing as he jerked more vigorously into his hands. “No point.”

She added further lines to the graphite cockhead. “I quite agree. Better to see and be seen, if you’re going to go to the trouble.”

“You find—partners easily enough—”

Her cunt clenched down at that, though she kept her hands on the desk. “I’m not an insufferable overdramatic control freak.”

He took his balls in one hand as he continued thrusting into the other. “Nor am I.”

She looked up from the diary. “No, you hate legwork and general scenes, don’t you?” As he stroked faster, she continued, “Is that why you personally went all the way to Serbia?”

Mycroft groaned.

“Ah, you do like a bit of that, remembering. Rather good, you were, rather _skillful_ , according to the debrief report.”

The lines of his face and neck were elegant in his dimmed dungeon office lighting, alabaster skin glistening against a background orange tint. One particularly shiny bead of sweat had settled on the end of his nose, mimicking the tint of precome appearing at the head of his prick.

“Throwing yourself headlong into a desperate bid to save your baby brother, and aren’t you lucky that it included a bit of fancy dress, to boot? You must have looked fearsome in their military get-up, very Slavic with that nose of yours.” Sweat was beginning to build on her own thighs and the back of her neck as Mycroft’s lips parted yet more widely and the tip of his tongue emerged. “Did you dirty yourself up, too, to distract from your dreadful accent?”

“It was fine—”

“Please, Mycroft.” He was beginning to shake from exertion, his fingers circling the head of his prick as he continued to thrust; her cunt twinged. “I have much of the same language training you do, and your very undramatic self made sure to include in the report how very quickly you figured you’d just pick up a little light Serbian, as it were, just enough to _get by_ in a military camp.”

“My Bulgarian—”

“—would not be enough to cover the issue of an accent, my charming little spy, ‘closely related languages’ be damned.” She drew light tufts of hair along the balls as Mycroft rubbed harder at his cockhead. “You liked your martial playacting; the language barrier added a nice little challenge, I’m sure.”

“Saving—”

“Your brother, I know. I never said you weren't a _dutiful_ sort of thespian.” She let the pencil fall, leaning back in his chair to survey the sight of a red-faced, half-dressed Mycroft on his knees, furiously wanking. “A queen and country sort of tart, shriveled heart in the right vicinity in the end. And a liar.”

He moaned.

“I never—”

“Every time you deny it, you lie, Mycroft.” She was wet in earnest now, her thighs rocking against his chair as he whimpered and threw his head back. “This _is_ as dramatic as all that, never mind Edwin and Smyth. And yet—scarcely a word from you, over more than a year. Is it too much to bear?”

“I told you. Duty—”

“Of the most hypocritically dramatic sort.” She wiped the sweat from one palm on the seat on his chair. “Come here.”

He thrust deeper into his hand. She kicked the underside of his desk again, lightly but enough to cause him to halt midthrust.

“You'll come here, pet, before you come over there, unless you don't want any further part of this.”

He released his cock slowly, taking shallow breaths, before crawling to sit at her feet. She sighed and drew the fingers of one hand through his wisps of hair before widening her legs.

“However you please, darling.”

He pressed his mouth against the base of her neck, working his lips and tongue around the edge of her blouse as he slid one hand into her trousers. His fingers were slippery and held tight by fabric against her pelvis, crooking around and into her as she gripped the back of his neck with one hand and the base of his spine with the other.

Mycroft was up to the second knuckle in her, his thumb bruising the edge of her clit as she gasped up at the ceiling, when he spoke against her skin.

“Not dramatic.”

She dug her nails into his neck and arse, squeezing. He moaned and slid another finger inside her, sending a fresh bolt of heat south, as she slid a thumb into his cleft, stroked toward his entrance, and held his thighs in place with her knees before he could jolt out of position.

“Masochist. Finish your job.”

He obeyed, one hand down her pants, one massaging her hips until, to the vigorously steady rhythm of his fingers, she came silently, her fingers digging into the flesh of his arse and pushing his head into her chest.

“Good boy.”

He slid out of her, his fingers shiny and trembling as he fell to his knees alongside the chair. His gaze darted from his wet fingers to her body and back again.

“You want them in your mouth, like that poor chewed pencil, don't you, needy little wretch?”

He looked down.

“Ashamed enough to look away at that but not at your fingers buried in my cunt? Strange creature.” She bracketed his body on the floor with her legs. “Do you really want to be punished?”

He made a choking sound, wrapping fingers around her ankle. “Yes,” he whispered.

“What was that?”

He cleared his throat more ostentatiously, forcing her to smile, and looked back up into her face. “Please beat me.”

She palmed the ruler, turning it over and over between her fingers as he followed its path through the air.

“And why am I beating your arse, pet?”

“To teach me a lesson.” His eyes were half-closed, and when she reached down for his wrist, his pulse beat erratically against her fingers.

“What do you suppose that lesson might be, Mr. Holmes?”

“I don't—”

She dug nails into him until he whined, then paused as he breathed in and out. His lips curled with pleasure as she kept hold of him, watching the fading red and white half moons against his skin.

“You say I’m overdramatic.”

“And am I telling you the truth, Mr. Holmes?”

He offered her his other wrist, palm up, but did not speak. His face was sweaty and notably ashen, considering the blood pumping elsewhere in his body, and his eyes glittered wide and questioning, black with traces of watery gray at the edges.

“Mr. Holmes.”

Her cunt was tingling again, quick tendrils of electricity up from her clit to the back of her neck. She set the ruler against his open diary and took Mycroft’s second wrist in hand. When he spoke, it was in a drifting and distant tone.

“Yes.”

She licked her lips as her own heart thudded.

“Shall we start with the ruler?”

He blinked. “If you like.”

“You know I do.” She released his wrists. “Bring it and we’ll see how well this chair takes the two of us.”

He did not get off his knees as he shuffled to the desk to retrieve the ruler, before turning to her, sprawled in his chair with her legs spread. She took it lightly, brushing her fingers over his.

“Thank you, Mycroft.”

His cheeks reddened as he hovered to her right, half-kneeling, half-standing. She massaged her fingertips into the wood of the ruler, tracing hatch marks, until she saw a spasm go through the muscles of his leg.

“Tired?”

“Yes, my lady.” His voice was soft, barely above a murmur. She pulled her legs together once more and smoothed her trousers.

“Up you get.”

Mycroft took his time in settling himself over her knee, cock trapped close to her, arse presented to the air, torso and head hanging horizontally to her left. As he shifted, she cupped an arsecheek with one hand as she ran the edge of the ruler down the back of his thighs with the other, watching the goose pimples erupting in its wake.

“How long can you hold this, Mycroft?”

His inhale resonated along her own thighs up to her cunt. “Long enough.”

She massaged more deeply into his arsecheek, tracing a thumb down his cleft as he made some piteous sound.

“Lovely, you know that?” She tickled the edge of his hole; he swore. “A shame it has to belong to such an inveterate hypocrite and liar.”

“Thank you.”

She laid the ruler across the width of his arse; he froze, even his breathing suspending in midair.

“Do let me know if it’s too much, if I give you a splinter, or some such nonsense.”

“Of—of course.”

She ran the ruler from one cheek to the other, drawing it down the cleft alongside her thumb, amusing herself with the evanescent red-white spiderwebs of pressure this created. When she slid the ruler over his entrance, his pelvis angled upward, and she pressed him back down. Once he had quieted, she pressed the tip of an index finger inside.

“Please,” he whispered, again arching several centimeters off her knees.

“Please?” She traced patterns along his lower back and arse, letters now—an A, an M, barely skirting the opening. “Punishment can only be issued after confession.”

“I confess.” When he hesitated, she pinched an arsecheek, and he whimpered in earnest. “I was wrong. About Smyth and Edwin.”

She traced an H onto his left cheek. He sighed.

“They didn’t matter. I was wrong. Out of—” she pinched, and he gasped “—proportion. I was wrong, I was wrong, I was—”

The ruler against his right cheek made an exquisite crack; she could feel it in her arm. Mycroft’s skin turned bloodless in its wake; he groaned.

“You _were_ wrong,” she said as she massaged where she’d struck. His pelvis bucked beneath her touch. “And you know why.”

“Bad—logic trees.”

She laughed as she swung again, short and clean, bisecting the first. His response was a grunt, cock twitching against her. Before he could settle, she dealt him two more, to the left arsecheek, scarcely a second in between them, then a pause, filled with his shaky breathing, before another, single strike across both cheeks.

“All right?”

Sweat was beading on the back of his neck; she stroked there as he sighed. His arse had blotches of pink where the ruler had touched him.

“Yes.” He shifted his legs. “More?”

She ran the ruler from the base of his neck to his waist, digging into his shirt. The muscles of his back rippled, and she bit down a sigh at the sight. “Why would I do that?”

“ _Please_ , I—I was wrong.”

“So you’ve said.”

“I was anxious—” she dug the edge of the ruler into the top of his arse, and he yelped “—and terribly useless and wrong, I was wrong, I— _ah_!”

The ruler came down twice diagonally across his arse, the second a particularly stinging swing that left one of her fingertips numb. The pink splotches had spread further; she massaged one, leaving a white streak through the pink under her finger as his cock rubbed her knee.

“I was wrong.”

She stroked further, pulling the edge of a nail across one spot of color as he wriggled.

“I truly was wrong.”

Her nails drifted down to brush the back of his balls until he stilled.

“Please.”

“Please? Do you have more to confess?” She slid a finger against the base of his cock; he sobbed, quiet and dry. “Prodigious sinfulness indeed, Mr. Holmes.”

“I loved Serbia.” The words tripped over themselves on their way out of his mouth. He cleared his throat. “He was safe. Good.”

He made the most exquisite whimper-sob as she dealt him three further blows, pink turning to red across his arse. She let him breathe, trembling, for a moment before the fourth crack, exactly where the third had been, causing him to cry out and tilt forward until her free hand went to his back to steady him.

“The fourth was for your accent.”

Mycroft’s laugh was wet, soft in volume and yet slightly maniacal. His draped arms brushed against her lower legs, sending a jolt to her stomach, and she pinched the top of his left cheek.

“You saved his life with shit Serbian.” One stroke across the lowest and fleshiest point of his arse, narrowly avoiding the exposed backside of his balls. “And you had fun doing it, _acting_ out the part of the hero with your own body instead of just your brain.”

“Alicia. Yes, my lady.” His legs flailed behind him, arse tilting off her knees again until she forced his hips flush with her again. “I _did_ it.” He exhaled, and she could almost feel him smiling. “More?"

The skin across his arse was hot, his pulse throbbing against her as she palmed one cheek.

“A personal touch, Mr. Holmes?”

His cock jerked.

“Yes.”

The word was hardly out of his mouth before she brought her bare hand across his cheek. The stinging radiated up two fingers, a shock of briefly numbing contact lingering after the impact itself. She pressed her palm into him again, skin against skin, as he moaned.

He flexed, jiggling, at each of the bare-handed slaps she gave him, pausing to watch the streaks left behind turn from white to pinkish-red. Her other hand held him down by the dip above his arse, tracing the alphabet across his lower back. After five strokes, Mycroft was boneless against her and panting. After seven, her hand had grown heavy and he was rigid again, gasping, his hands scrabbling against her legs.

“Three more?”

He tensed further. “Please.”

She massaged his dipped shoulders until he leaned away.

“It will hurt,” she reminded him, eyeing the tautness of the red skin across the heft of both cheeks.

“Yes.”

She took in a breath before beginning and exhaled with the first slap. Her hand vibrated, the skin of her palm tight and pinkish-red itself, and she shook it out before the second. With the third, her entire hand went numb as a line of frisson ran from her elbow into her stomach and down to her cunt. Across her lap, Mycroft’s arse was bright red, and he struggled to wrap a hand under himself.

His cock blazed in her grip, its head slick in spots against her trousers. She pushed Mycroft gently until he was back on his own knees alongside the chair, prick red and swollen against his shirt as she stroked its length.

“All right?”

He grunted, putting one of his hands against his balls and bucking into the touch. She pulled at his cockhead until his limbs began to stiffen.

“Good lad, that,” she said, tweaking until the first spurt of come appeared, upon which she dragged her hand away.

When he finished, gasping, sweat dripping across his forehead, he looked back at the splay of her legs. She pulled them up under her as she tossed the ruler onto the desk.

“Just sit and think, yes?”

He pressed his forehead against the edge of the chair and exhaled. She turned her attention to the half-finished sketch in his diary. By the time he stirred again, she had added the foreskin and hints of shading to the frenulum, along with further curls along its base.

“Please tell me that isn't mine.”

Mycroft was staring at the drawing.

“Your diary, darling, or your cock?”

His voice rose in pitch. “Does it matter, really?”

“Does it?”

“No.” His lips twisted. “I’m falling out of proportion again already, aren't I?”

She offered him the pencil and nodded as he sighed and slid it between his teeth.

“You do learn quickly.”

He leaned his head back against her legs and closed his eyes.


End file.
